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Sunday, July 14, 2019

Echo Royale - Steam Review

Ready to take a trip into sadness? Let’s explore depression as if it were a dark cave in Virginia that we could visit for the afternoon. Don’t stay too long, or you won’t be able to get out. (Also bring sandwiches and toilet paper.) Readers, I bring you the budget title Echo Royale.

Mechanically, we have a cheap Flappy Bird clone where the player takes the role of a dolphin instead of good ol’ Flappy Bird.

The main menu shows an “Online Play” option as well as the traditional solo play, but as far as I have never been able to actually get into any kind of game using this function. To be honest, I’m not really sure what “Vaperwave Flappy Bird” would play like online.

This is clearly supposed to be a vaporwave inspired game. However, vaporwave is, by definition, a type of music. Paradoxically, there is only one background track which plays through the entirety of the game and it’s absolutely awful.

Under the “Options” sub menu, there is an “About” selection. I clicked into this expecting to find version information and perhaps developer credits. Instead of that, I found the privacy policy which explains that ‘Echo Royale” is collecting my personal data for the purposes of advertising. The policy is extensive and includes collecting Google search data.Yes, what you are about to see was linked from within the game itself.

This game is a travesty. The problem is not that its super simple or that there isn’t much content. A case can be made for a super simple game as long as it’s appropriately priced. One example of this done right is “Blast Em”, a super simple shmup with auto fire that sells for .99 on Steam. The problem it is completely devoid of fun. When you add in the privacy concerns, I can’t help but write this game off as a scam of the worst kind. This is even worse than Unity asset flips. At least those aren’t selling my personal data.

Do not buy this game under any circumstances. Do not accept it as a gift. Do not install it.

As for my list of games that I have reviewed, Echo Royale definitely goes on the bottom. ∀kashicforce was a big disappointment but it least it had a little charm in its presentation and it wasn’t secretly data mining me.